#but the rest...kind of mid

[fideidefenswhore]

#TheTudorsWeek2023, by @thetudorsgifs | Day 1: Best Episode(s)

Episode 2x02: Tears of Blood: Henry continues undermining the Catholic Church's influence in England, while his chaplain makes a fact-finding tour of Lutheran Germany; Anne resolves to consummate her relationship with the king as Brandon plants doubts about her virtue.

Episode 2x03: Checkmate: His patience at an end, Henry marries Anne in secret, appoints his Lutheran chaplain Thomas Cranmer the head of the Church, and strips Queen Katherine of her title and status; the king and new queen's first child is born, a girl christened Elizabeth.

Episode 2x10: Destiny and Fortune: In the Season 2 finale, Anne awaits execution in the Tower of London as Henry's marriage to her is annulled, baby Elizabeth is removed from the line of succession, and Henry proposes to Jane Seymour, who accepts.

Episode 3x05: Problems in the Reformation: Henry remains in seclusion while mourning the queen's death, an opportunity that enemies of the crown seize to murder several friends of the court; Cromwell is disturbed when Henry doesn't resist his new church's similarities to Catholicism.

Episode 3x09: The Undoing of Cromwell: In the Season Three finale, Henry moves swiftly to annul his loveless marriage to Anne of Cleves, and beds a new teenage mistress; Princess Mary falls in love with Duke Philip of Bavaria; Cromwell's fall from favor is sudden and dramatic.

Episode 4x01: Moment of Nostalgia: Henry introduces his new wife to court, Katherine Howard, his fifth Queen. She attempts to befriend Henry's children; this succeeds with his young son, Prince Edward, but she receives only contempt from Lady Mary while Lady Elizabeth is receptive but prefers to spend time with Henry's former wife Anne of Cleves.

[piecesofchess]

Tartarus is still a little broken and that's Fun !

[not-poignant]

Stupid question, but I remembered seeing you mention having monthly minimum wordcounts on one of your previous posts and I wanted to ask if you're a professional writer? Because at first I was like "that sounds so stressful"* and then I realized that it makes a lot more sense if you're doing it for a living.

*Also acknowledging that people are different from each other and what is stressful for one person might be productive and useful for another.

I am a professional writer!

My original serials are my job, basically, and they're supported by generous folks at Patreon and Ream. That, in turn, allows me to do this in a more professional and focused way, vs. say just as a hobbyist who doesn't update for 9 months at a time. It also lets me share my works for free, in a fandom friendly manner, which lets me keep doing something I love in a way I love to do it, but in a way which is like...I guess more reliable than you'd necessarily be if you were only doing it for fun.

I can instead pledge high fidelity/loyalty to my main serials through thick and thin (hence my wild author's notes), which means folks following WIPs get to know they'll be finished, and I get to enjoy doing this for a living! It's hard, but it's a good hard. Except for taxes.

As for my monthly minimum, that actually started as a way to break out of the very ableist 'you should write every day' (as a professional writer) which is literally impossible for me and my chronic illnesses. I sometimes have big chunks of time where I can't write, sometimes weeks! And where it would be unhealthy for me to make myself.

(More about my writing process beneath the Read More!)

Alongside that, I have quite severe dyscalculia (think dyslexia but with numbers and directions and left and right lol) so I can't keep a 'running wordcount' because the numbers confuse me too much. Luckily, because my writing life is defined by chapters completed (and not novels), I count the wordcount of every finished chapter only. Unfinished chapters don't count! My growing wordcount per month grows only when that draft is finished (my drafts are clean, so chapters only tend to grow or shrink by about 100-150 words per edit, so give or take it all evens out).

It's not how any other author I know does it, but it works so well for me that I've been doing it for nearly a decade now.

I started the monthly minimum (which currently is 25k words per month) because I tend towards being a workaholic, and so my therapist and I established a minimum not as an unreachable goal that's hard to meet, but as an easy goal that's generally effortless for me to reach in good months, and average months, and even many bad ones. After I hit 25k words per month, if I crash, feel burnt out, feel awful, or life gets Life-y in a bad way, I have permission to stop writing. I can just stop. Everything else is gravy. (Though secretly I always want to hit 30-35k but shhh).

When I hit 50k words, I also have to stop immediately and take a mandatory 3-5 day break from writing even if I want to keep writing. Because I don't know it yet, but I'm probably exhausted on at least some level, lol.

I didn't hit 50k at all last year and there is at least one therapist who would be really proud of me about that even though I feel kind of guilty about it, lol.

Here's an example of my tracking:

You can see the chapters I've written, which dates I've written them. They're colour coded, so I can see at a glance if I'm writing enough of a story or not. And then on the far right is an addition of every month's wordcount.

April was so low because I took an intentional writing holiday (which I'll be doing again ideally in March this year). December was so low because December sucks.

And then I erase it all at the end of the year and start again. The blank whiteboard is actually very motivating to write that first chapter because I always feel like I haven't done anything until then.

This whiteboard is two feet away from where I write quite literally, and is never moved etc. so I have a yearly tracker basically that's extremely visible (super helpful to my ADHD brain, because if I put this in a spreadsheet I'll stop updating it after 3 weeks and then forget it exists). The colour coding gives me dopamine, so does adding chapters.

Also acknowledging that people are different from each other and what is stressful for one person might be productive and useful for another.

This is true! This is actually the least stressful way of doing things for me.

That being said, anon, it's still super stressful. Being a serial writer is one of the most stressful things you do, because you have constant and never-ending deadlines for years. Novelists can kind of escape this, in a way, because they can't release novels as often as I release chapters. But I have to be mentally switched on at least 8 times a month, re: putting work out there, making sure it's at least semi-polished, making sure I let everyone know, and tracking responses because obviously, unlike a novel, if you lose interest you can't just "skip ahead" you simply lose your readers. A lot of novelists couldn't live or work this way, a) because they couldn't write a hooky serial and b) because many realise that having to update all the time is really exhausting actually. There's a kind of social labour to updating a serial, and getting it Right every single time. One of my greatest fears that I have nightmares about

Serial writing is the most stressful kind of writing I've ever done (and I've done a few different kinds), I just happen to like the adrenaline rush of this kind of writing, and I happen to work well under a controlled level of stress! I know that, because I've been doing this for over 10 years, refining it, figuring out how to make it healthier (it was really unhealthy at first), getting better at it, figuring out my weak points (some of them are still weak points) etc. I actually think I'm pretty good at it now!

I'm also getting better at not thinking my entire career is over if I take 2 weeks off.

I went from being entirely dependent on a Disability Pension, and like, sometimes having to skip meals and doctor's appointments and even medication due to money issues (the Disability Pension is ironically not enough if you have mental health issues because our subsidised healthcare doesn't cover mental health adequately and Australia has no food stamps system), to being able to live a bit more freely and support my chronic health stuff a bit more because of writing this way!

For the first time ever through these stories I was able to afford a psychiatrist, and a few other things I really desperately have needed since I was a teenager. So being able to write like this, even when it's really hard and I'm really tired, feels still like a miracle to me. I've never been well or healthy enough to work a full-time job with typical 9-5 hours, and always kind of was stuck imagining a life where I'm just...never knowing how to afford certain things, to being in a position where I'm fairly confident I can get my meds every month, or pay for my dog's pet food, etc. It's really nice.

But yeah honestly serial writing is the most stressful form of serial writing there is as soon as you lock it in as a professional job where you must meet nearly 10 deadlines every month and you happen to have pretty intense ADHD so deadlines make you scream a little.

Sometimes what is extremely stressful and sometimes even distressing for someone is also extremely productive and rewarding for them too. We probably wouldn't have a lot of emergency surgeons if that were the bar for how we decide what we do!

[theinfinitedivides]

my Free Palestine sweater from wearthepeace came in the mail......................... y'all know i'm going to be putting this shit on and going every-fucking-where with it once it's washed the resistance is just beginning

[jangmi-latte]

working on commissions really challenge me to the core because wtf do you mean i'm kicking my feet and getting beet red over DEUCE SPADE???? MAN can't believe he can literally overpower my crush over ace

[glitzybunny]

*AAA- AAA- AACHOOO!* Sorry it's really dusty in here for some reason-

(shout out to my beloved wife for writing the image ID btw :3 @thestirringpot)

[nekomamiiz]

love waking up to this fr

[doodle17]

Yknow I’m surprised I haven’t seen SparkleDog-sona’s/Helluva Boss-sona’s of Raz and the gang considering his VA works with Ms. Vizpop

Im hoping they stay FAR away from it. But, I highly doubt it because I think the chances of that happen are slim to none

Look, Richard, my man. I love you, but for the love of God if there are any cameos of his actual GOOD characters in THAT show I'm going to lose it

Keep that shit away from my son

[you-have-made-a-fatal-error]

once upon a time, in about 2016, someone wrote HeR to find out where they sourced the images used to decorate Abby's room in MHM and were told that the art came from the Corel library.

this... was not true. obvs I don't think the HeR employee who answered that email was intentionally misleading/lying to this person, but it's bad info nevertheless. basically all the in game art from MHM/the early games came from the Mary Evans/Pictures Now collection, which I know because I've spent a buttload of time trying to id all the irl art used in the games.

so why bring up the Corel thing? because as it turns out that there is an ND game that almost exclusively* used art from Corel, but it's not MHM, or any of the early games. that game is in fact Warnings at Waverly Academy. seriously. easiest time I've ever had tracking down in-game art. (the corel art collection is waaay smaller than the mary evans/pictures now collection. like two orders of magnitude smaller. like 500 images vs 60,000 images. you get the picture.)

*and by almost exclusively I mean there is seriously one painting in wac that isn't on any of the corel art disks. and that painting? pictures now collection. why? why not any of the 450+ corel paintings that didn't make it into wac? the mind boggles.

[bitegore]

"his glass is half, her glass is full, my glass is empty / you're running short of not enough, well i've got plenty" genuinely a really well crafted line i think

[jittyjames]

i'm scared to talk about them bc every time I talk about fic plans I somehow always end up hating them and never posting bc I feel like I've overhyped them and people are going to think I'm weird and cringe and suck, BUT I'm really excited about whump: the musical and I want to post my fics now but I can't :(((((

[wormchaser]

superabsorbent by even rude is kind of awesome...

[epitomees]

"'Bout to experience the best coma goddamn nap of my short life. No one wake me up."

Ever.

[arwensundomiels]

[elidee-art]

Thinkin abt fancy boys as kids the other night.

Don't ask how often Kel got piggyback rides. It was too often

[schalotte]

pancake with spinach and feta if you even care